Hand of Oppression
by Torpedo Reno
Summary: An inexperienced detachment of Enclave conscripts are sent to fight an Outcast consortium - but, with strange and violent anomalies beginning to take shape, does it seem that the mission, was in fact, to combat... something else? Rated T for language.
1. Prologue

**Hand of Oppression**

_by Torpedo Reno_

_[A/N] Hey guys, it's Torpedo Reno here._

_Ever wondered what it was like on the "enemy side" of the battle between the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel? The Enclave - some may think of them as automaton conscripts who fight to put down humanity, but it's more than that._

_They all join up for reasons unknown, whether it be the loss of home, wanderlust, or to feed their families. They come from every stretch of the United States, and come together to do their duty as soldiers._

_Shall we begin?_

________________________________________________________________________________

**Date: 12.09.77**

**Location: Somewhere in Virginia**

Night time.

It's been two hundred and two years since the world was set ablaze. In the thousands of years before hand, war was fought with everything from sticks to fists - to sword and bow - ballister and cannon - then rifles and hand held explosives - then, finally, bombs that could destroy a city within seconds.

It took approximately three thousand years of beforehand battle before the world was destroyed within two hours. Two hours of fear, fire, the stench of burning bodies in the street, food riots and looting. The quiet sobs of children hiding under their beds, as men armed with baseball bats ripped their house door open, took what they wanted, and beat their father to death.

Its all too much to think about right now.

Even so, it's quite easy to enjoy the sounds of the night - crickets hiding in the small dust craters, rubbing their legs as they look for a mate to finish their lives with, the gentle snoozing of the radical mole rats sleeping in their dens, the soft moonlight playing across every rock and outcropping of this Capital Wasteland.

"Men, up!" We received the order and all fourteen of us, adorned in heavy Enclave power armor, stood up at attention.

"Arm and prepare!" We all simutaneously bent over, retrieved our weapon and stock, and swiftly set them in bandoliers and emplacements.

"Move out! Toes on the ground, heels in the air, stealth positions!" The whispering officer, taking point, took his heavily customized plasma pistol into his gloved right hand and we began to move out.

Everyone was silent as we crept through the December night. Luckily for the locals, the atmosphere was too heavily clogged by dust and radiation for any form of precipitation.

Of course, that also meant raising crops was very arduous, and often not worth it, as whatever is grown would shrivel up in the one hundred plus temps.

I looked at my wingman, Corporal Badic. Though he was barely descended from Serbian ancestors, he had a heavy... foreign ascent. It was difficult to understand him, but I didn't bother asking him to repeat himself, as it progressively got worse as his sinuses acted up.

I wanted to desperately to ask him if he had any family back home, in the South. In the day and a half we had to socialize with our team, he spent his time tinkering with his weaponry, running all kinds of experiments with his explosives. One time after mess hall duty, I found him cracking open one of his frag grenades and putting some jagged scrap metal in it, for extra shrapnel.

He's a strange guy, but also the kind you want to be friends with.

All of a sudden, the pointman held his hand up in a stop signal. He crept up a few feet and pulled a pair of binoculars from his belt.

After a few seconds, he relaxed. "Outcasts." He looked to the side, we couldn't see his expression through his grim, intimidating helmet. "Sergeant Hartdale and Prilodenes, with me. Everyone else stay put."

We all relaxed and set our heavy gear aside. We had found our contacts, and it looked like this operation would pass without any unnecessary combat. Apparently, these Outcasts grew disenchanted with their mediocre leadership and wished to "defect" (whatever that means) to the Enclave. Some men even began cracking open some ration cans and eating whatever there was inside, cold.

Personally, I would rather fight on an empty stomach. It makes me fight harder, and gives me a reason to come back to base to. We were all growing more and more tired of fighting, and we all needed a source of relaxation to come back to.

I take pleasure in eating. Before conscription, I was rather... well, fatass. Two hundred and thirty-six pounds, I remember. After basic training, I was one ninety. Now, I'm one seventy-four. I have no more family, they all took some kind of cancer and died. We lived near the rivers of former Boston, and the radiation and lack of ozone took its toll. Me? I have a benign skin tumor, from spending so much time on my porch and drinking warm beer. It's benign, nothing to worry about.

I looked over at Badic, and he turned a helmetless head to me. "Yeah?" he said.

"Nothin," I mumbled through my helmet. "... Wait, do you have any family back home?"

"In Europe?" he opened up his AER9 laser rifle and began fiddling with the chamber.

"Nah, Flawrida." I began to speak louder, in a whisper-shout about now.

"Who told you I have family in Florida?" I could see he began to feel interrogated, and I thought to stop.

"Never mind," I said. "Sorry." I apologized for reasons unknown, and turned back to the rest of the squad.

I had barely rested eyes on another member of the team when all of a sudden, I began to hear discharges and dirt being kicked up. We all looked up to see two of the men who had just left, running with their rifles cradled in their arms, kicking up heavy dirt as their heavy boots hit the ground. They jumped behind the outcropping that we were behind, breathless.

"What the hel-" someone spoke up. "What just happened?"

One of the guys who just ran in, Hartdale, began going on breathlessly - "The captain got it. Right in the chest. We need evac, and he had the radio."

"Sunnuva bitch," someone whispered behind me. "What'ta we gunna do, Sarge?"

"What the hell do you think we're going to do, boy? We're gonna stomp in there and kick their asses." Before the last word even left his mouth, a single laser shot pierced the air and kicked up the dirt near our camp.

"Let's go! Double-time!" Prilodenes shouted, raising his automatic, and began putting down some suppressive fire on the Outcasts. The rest of us began moving in on the flanks, while Badic stayed back to hold Prilodene's position. I sustained the right, taking near the front with my Tri-Beam laser shotgun. We moved in quickly, and within mere seconds, we were kicking down the Outcast's back door.

Literally.

There was a small guard tower, where I and another member of the squad, Jester, took the sides of a door, while a demo expert began readying a grenade. Jester kicked open the door and the demoman tossed in the frag. We held our breathing, and the frag detonated, sending a shower of dirt and tile out of the door. "Go, go!" Jester shouted, firing a laser rifle in the doorway. I stumbled over the remains of the door, and raised my shotgun. An Outcast scribe and a guard stood by at a computer. The scribe, an elderly woman, raised her hands in surrender. The guard turned his head with a scowl on his helmetless face, raising a sizzling pistol. I ducked, but saw the guard shoot the scribe in the shoulder, sending her sprawling to the floor, while he repeatedly fired at the terminal she was working at, destroying the data inside. We weren't after the data, I hoped, but I blew the guard away with a single blast to the stomach, sending his pink entrails splattering against the metallic walls. The demoman gruffly picked up the scribe by the forearm, heavily breathing, the laser wound on her shoulder sizzling. He dragged her out the door and leaned her against the wall, where she sat, breathing and looking upon the demo in anger.

"You boys go assist the other flank, I'll take care of this," he said, a sergeant coming up to his aid.

I looked at Jester, his eyes smiling through his helmet eyeports. "Let's move."

We both hoofed it out through the smoldering Outcast camp, dead bodies strewn all over the place. One in every four of the dead bodies were one of ours. Minimal casualties.

When we arrived at the other side, we saw everything had been taken care of. Though there were even more casualties on the side, we saw several more Outcast prisoners, one scribe, the others were grunts. They were already being interrogated.

"You boys, hold up." a Gunnery Sarge stopped us. "We still need to find the captain's stiff, he has the evac radio."

"I already got it." Jester raised a gauntlet with a small transmitter in his grasp. I looked at him - how he found the captain's corpse so quickly and nonchalantly in this mess, I don't know. Jester's slick like that.

The Gunny looked at him. "Good job, Jester."

"All for the effort," he returned, the Gunny grunting and holding the panic button on the transmitter.

"Intel, this is Gunnery Sergeant David Nugent, asking for evac, over."

The Intelligence officer in charge's voice suddenly echoed through my helmet, "**Gunny Sergeant, your request is not applicable at your current locale. It's still too hot for a bird, over."**

"We're perfectly clear, Intel. All hostiles neutralized, and we have a few presents for the interrogation department, over."

**"Gunny, we seem to be registering a huge blip under your locale. We're sending in a bird, but be careful."**

The Gunny smiled. "Thanks, Intel. Echo B squad out."

He looked at us. "Well, what the hell you still looking at me for, buck? Go clean up the bodies for our guest." Jester started snickering until the Gunny continued, "And you too, Jester. Hehe."

Jester was still chuckling even while we began lining up the bodies, giving preference to our fallen first. A corpsman came in and began to help us, putting holotags on the injured, and marking the dead's frontal armor plate with a highlighter pen.

A few minutes before we finished the work, we were greeted by the whooshing sound of a Vertibird flying from the northwest. All the team members began cheering and raising their weapons in the air as the bird began circling a spot, getting ready for touchdown.

All of a sudden, the sky light up in the southeast. The cheers began to intensify even more, but I stopped. Everyone slowly began to stop as we saw the light get closer and closer.

"What the fu-" the Gunny looked on as all of a sudden, our vision was blurred in a huge light, then our ears were rocked with a massive explosion. First, the air stilled, then it seemed to warp as a sonic blast ripped through the atmosphere, knocking some to the ground and sending others sprawling in the air. The Vertibird began to spin out of control and suddenly burst into a huge explosion in mid air, and we were suddenly showered with metal shards and body parts. Then, I blacked out.


	2. 22 Minutes Later

_22 Minutes Later..._

I awoke, the air instantly smelling of scorched meat and brimstone. I slowly got up, in a daze, stumbling around the dirt-showered zone...

I looked down. The Gunny Sarge was completely torn in half, the sloppy, wet intestines stretching across the ground in a twenty foot radius... Jester was lying on the ground, face down. Another soldier was also slowly walking around, his arm torn off at the elbow, but he didn't seem to notice. He just walked up to all the bodies around him and searched for their pulse...

I looked to the side, though all I could see in my right eye was blood; the smoldering remains of the Vertibird, my eyes darting back and forth from the Gunny's body. His radio was still crackling, "Come in? Gunny, come in." In a daze, I pulled the transmitter from the dirt. I could see through my power armor gauntlet, most of it was shredded metal and synthetic material.

That's when I noticed my fingernails were gone.

I barely even cared. I just wanted to get out of here. "In.. Intel.. This is Conscript Spaulder, come in.."

**"We're registering you, Conscript. Your heart rate seems to be very low. What happened, over?"**

"... I have... I don't have the slightest, Intel." I looked around once more, a plume of black smoke rose from our position. "Just.. please, get me to base..." That's when the transmitter shut off, and I fell to my knees. Several black shadows passed in front of me, and my ears were rocked with another sonic blast. I blacked out once more, my face falling into the dirt.


End file.
